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      CNN Will Host Two GOP Debates in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2024

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      The announcement of the debates, planned for the days before each state’s nominating contest, comes as the Republican National Committee considers loosening its rules for the onstage clashes.CNN will hold two Republican presidential debates in Iowa and New Hampshire next month in the days leading up to those states’ nominating contests, the network said on Thursday.The announcement, made a day after the fourth debate this year, comes as the Republican National Committee weighs whether to loosen its rules and allow candidates to take part in debates that it does not sponsor. A spokesman for the committee, Keith Schipper, said on social media that it had not approved the CNN debates.The committee approved four debates this year, steadily raising the minimum thresholds for participation and pushing out lower-polling candidates.The current Republican front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, did not attend any of the debates. An adviser to his campaign said he did not plan to participate in the CNN debates.The Republican Party had suggested it might hold forums in January in both Iowa and New Hampshire, but multiple people involved in the process said those debates might no longer be sponsored by the party.Almost immediately on Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has staked his campaign’s success on a strong showing in Iowa, said he would participate in the debate there.That gathering will be held on Jan. 10 at Drake University in Des Moines, five days before the Iowa caucuses. The network will allow candidates to participate only if they have received at least 10 percent in three separate national or Iowa polls, with at least one poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers.The second debate is scheduled for Jan. 21 at St. Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., two days before the New Hampshire primary election. The top three finishers in Iowa will be invited to participate. Otherwise, the criteria are similar to the Iowa debate. More

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      White House denounces Fox News over host’s ‘foul’ remarks on CNN pair

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      For the second time in two days, the White House denounced Fox News over remarks by a host relating to the Israel-Hamas war, following condemnation of Jesse Watters’ apparent incitement of violence against Arab Americans with condemnation of Mark Levin for calling two CNN anchors “self-hating Jews”.Andrew Bates, a spokesperson, said: “President Biden believes in an America where we come together against hate and don’t fan its flames. But not only is Fox News aligning with those who fan the flames of hate – Fox is paying their salaries.”Levin, who hosts Life, Liberty & Levin, a Fox News weekend show, attacked Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper of CNN on The Mark Levin Show, his daily radio show which is syndicated by Westwood One.Though Levin, who is Jewish, acknowledged Blitzer’s family history – all the CNN anchor’s grandparents were killed in the Holocaust – Levin said Blitzer’s parents “weren’t victims”. Regarding Blitzer’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, Levin called the host “a dumb bastard” with “a hearing problem and an IQ problem” who “wants Israel to die”.Blitzer was a “self-hating Jew”, Levin said, reaching for a label he previously applied to Tapper.CNN called Levin’s comments “wildly uninformed, inappropriate and shameful”, adding that his “antisemitic rhetoric is dangerous, offensive and should be universally denounced”.On Friday, the White House did so.“Lying to insult the pain that families suffered in the Holocaust has absolutely no place in America,” Bates said. “None. Sadly, this is not the first time in recent months that a Fox News host made sickening remarks about the Holocaust.“Despite condemnation from the Auschwitz Memorial, Fox has not even disagreed with Greg Gutfeld’s reprehensible claim that Nazi labour camps taught Jews to be ‘useful’.”In July, during a debate over the rightwing claim that some Black people benefited from being enslaved, Gutfeld said on air: “Did you ever [read] Man’s Search for Meaning? Vik[tor] Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive.”On Friday, in his statement on Levin’s comments, Bates said: “It isn’t even the first time this week that a Fox host chose to abuse their platform and spread hate.”A day before, Bates condemned comments in which Watters, discussing instances of pictures of Israeli hostages held by Hamas being taken down from public display, seemed to advocate violence.Watters said: “If you’re an Arab American in this country, and you rip down posters of Jewish hostages, American hostages, no. No, no, no. Someone is going to get punched in the face.”Referring to a recent killing in Illinois, now the subject of murder and hate crime charges, Bates said: “Even after the heartbreaking killing of a six-year-old Palestinian American child and a surge in violence against Muslims and Arab Americans, two nights ago Jesse Watters made vile comments that attack the dignity of all Americans, saying he’s ‘done’ with Arab Americans and Muslims.“And Fox News continues to promote the cynical, dangerous lie that fighting against Islamophobia is somehow at odds with fighting antisemitism, even as they permit hosts to hurt their viewers with foul antisemitic comments.“President Biden will always stand up against antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of hate. Fox News needs to stop standing up on behalf of hate.”Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      Viewership Fell Sharply for Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Fewer than 10 million people watched the Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday, according to preliminary data from Nielsen.Fewer than 10 million people watched the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, according to preliminary data from Nielsen, a sign that interest in the race is waning without the presence of former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for his party’s nomination, who has so far refused to participate in the debates.The audience on Wednesday — viewers of Fox News (6.7 million), Fox Business (1.8 million) and Univision (813,000) — was down from the 12.8 million people who tuned in last month to watch the first Republican primary debate. Fox also hosted that debate.Those numbers are a fraction of the audiences for the first two Republican presidential debates in the summer of 2015, when a crowded field and curiosity about Mr. Trump pushed ratings to record highs. The first, hosted by Fox News in Cleveland, drew nearly 24 million viewers — ranking among the most-watched events in cable-TV history. The second, hosted by CNN in Simi Valley, Calif., had an audience of 22.9 million.Without Mr. Trump this primary season, the networks and the Republican National Committee are in a difficult spot. Television executives will be faced with deciding whether it’s worth the cost to produce an event that is drawing relatively tepid interest and is, for the moment, of questionable significance given Mr. Trump’s dominance in the polls. In most national surveys taken since the summer, he has led his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by more than 30 points.Mr. Trump appears unlikely to agree to appear at any debate in the near future. His campaign said this week that he would not participate in one scheduled for early November in Miami. And one of his senior advisers called on the Republican National Committee on Wednesday not to schedule any more debates for the primary season so Republicans could instead focus on defeating President Biden.Despite the lower ratings, the debate attracted an audience larger than any other program on cable or network television on Wednesday evening. More

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      Ramaswamy Relies on Denialism When Challenged on Flip-Flopping Positions

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      In clashes with the news media and his rivals, the Republican upstart has retreated from past comments and lied about on-the-record statements.In his breakout performance in the Republican primary race, Vivek Ramaswamy has harnessed his populist bravado while frequently and unapologetically contorting the truth for political gain, much in the same way that former President Donald J. Trump has mastered.Mr. Ramaswamy’s pattern of falsehoods has been the subject of intensifying scrutiny by the news media and, more recently, his G.O.P. opponents, who clashed with him often during the party’s first debate last Wednesday.There are layers to Mr. Ramaswamy’s distortions: He has spread lies and exaggerations on subjects including the 2020 election results, the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol and climate change. When challenged on those statements, Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who is the first millennial Republican to run for president, has in several instances claimed that he had never made them or that he had been taken out of context.But his denials have repeatedly been refuted by recordings and transcripts from Mr. Ramaswamy’s interviews — or, in some cases, excerpts from his own book.Here are some notable occasions when he sought to retreat from his past statements or mischaracterized basic facts:A misleading anecdoteAt a breakfast round table event organized by his campaign on Friday in Indianola, Iowa, Mr. Ramaswamy recounted how he had visited the South Side of Chicago in May to promote his immigration proposals to a mostly Black audience.He boasted that nowhere had his ideas on the issue been more enthusiastically received than in the nation’s third most populous city, where his appearance had followed community protests over the housing of migrants in a local high school.“I have never been in a room more in favor of my proposal to use the U.S. military to secure the southern border and seal the Swiss cheese down there than when I was in a nearly all-Black room of supposedly mostly Democrats on the South Side of Chicago,” he said.But Mr. Ramaswamy’s retelling of the anecdote was sharply contradicted by the observations of a New York Times reporter who covered both events.The reporter witnessed the audience in Chicago pepper Mr. Ramaswamy about reparations, systemic racism and his opposition to affirmative action. Immigration was barely mentioned during the formal program. It was so absent that a Ramaswamy campaign aide at one point pleaded for questions on the issue. With that prompting, a single Republican consultant stood up to question Mr. Ramaswamy on his proposals.Trump criticismAt the first Republican debate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey accused Mr. Ramaswamy of changing positions on Donald Trump.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn one of the more heated exchanges of last week’s G.O.P. debate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey criticized Mr. Ramaswamy for lionizing Mr. Trump and defending his actions during the Jan. 6 attack.He sought to cast Mr. Ramaswamy as an opportunist who was trying to pander to Mr. Trump’s supporters by attributing the riot to government censorship during the 2020 election.“In your book, you had much different things to say about Donald Trump than you’re saying here tonight,” Mr. Christie said.Mr. Ramaswamy bristled and said, “That’s not true.”But in his 2022 book “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence,” Mr. Ramaswamy had harsh words for Mr. Trump and gave a more somber assessment of the violence.“It was a dark day for democracy,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote. “The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”When asked by The Times about the excerpt, Mr. Ramaswamy insisted that his rhetoric had not evolved and pointed out that he had co-written an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal five days after the Jan. 6 attack that was critical of the actions of social media companies during the 2020 election.“Also what I said at the time was that I really thought what Trump did was regrettable,” he said. “I would have handled it very differently if I was in his shoes. I will remind you that I am running for U.S. president in the same race that Donald Trump is running right now.”Mr. Ramaswamy parsed his criticism of the former president, however.“But a bad judgment is not the same thing as a crime,” he said.During the debate, Mr. Ramaswamy also sparred with former Vice President Mike Pence, whose senior aide and onetime chief of staff Marc Short told NBC News the next day that Mr. Ramaswamy was not a genuine populist.“There’s populism and then there’s just simply fraud,” he said.By blunting his message about the former president’s accountability and casting himself as an outsider, Mr. Ramaswamy appears to be making a play for Mr. Trump’s base — and the G.O.P. front-runner has taken notice.In a conversation on Tuesday with the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Mr. Trump said that he was open to selecting Mr. Ramaswamy as his running mate, but he had some advice for him.“He’s starting to get out there a little bit,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s getting a little bit controversial. I got to tell him: ‘Be a little bit careful. Some things you have to hold in just a little bit, right?’”Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11Since entering the race, Mr. Ramaswamy has repeatedly floated conspiracy theories about a cover-up by the federal government in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a narrative seemingly tailored to members of the G.O.P.’s right wing who are deeply distrustful of institutions.In a recent profile by The Atlantic, he told the magazine, “I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the twin towers.”While he acknowledged that he had “no reason” to believe that the number was “anything other than zero,” Mr. Ramaswamy suggested that the government had not been transparent about the attacks.“But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to,” he said.Yet when Mr. Ramaswamy was asked to clarify those remarks by Kaitlan Collins of CNN two nights before last week’s debate, he backtracked and accused The Atlantic of misquoting him.“I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually,” he said.Soon after Mr. Ramaswamy claimed that his words had been twisted, The Atlantic released a recording and transcript from the interview that confirmed that he had indeed been quoted accurately.When asked in an interview on Saturday whether the audio had undercut his argument, Mr. Ramaswamy reiterated his contention that the news media had often misrepresented him.“I think there’s a reason why,” he said, suggesting that his free-flowing way of speaking broke the mold of so-called scripted candidates. “I just don’t speak like a traditional politician, and I think the system is not used to that. The political media is not used to that. And that lends itself naturally then to being inaccurately portrayed, to being distorted.”Mr. Trump’s allies have used similar justifications when discussing the former president’s falsehoods, citing his stream-of-consciousness speaking style. His allies and supporters have admired his impulse to refuse to apologize or back down when called out, an approach Mr. Ramaswamy has echoed.Mr. Ramaswamy said that he was asked about Sept. 11 while discussing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and his repeated calls for an accounting of how many federal agents were in the field that day. His campaign described The Atlantic’s recording as a “snippet.”At the start of The Times’s conversation with Mr. Ramaswamy, he said that he assumed that the interview was being recorded and noted that his campaign was recording, too.“We’re now doing mutually on the record, so just F.Y.I.,” he said.Pardoning Hunter BidenIn one of many clashes with the news media, Mr. Ramaswamy accused The New York Post of misquoting him in an article about Hunter Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesNo news outlet has been off-limits to Mr. Ramaswamy’s claims of being misquoted: This month, he denounced a New York Post headline that read: “GOP 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy ‘open’ to pardon of Hunter Biden.”The Aug. 12 article cited an interview that The Post had conducted with him.“After we have shut down the F.B.I., after we have refurbished the Department of Justice, after we have systemically pardoned anyone who was a victim of a political motivated persecution — from Donald Trump and peaceful January 6 protests — then would I would be open to evaluating pardons for members of the Biden family in the interest of moving the nation forward,” Mr. Ramaswamy was quoted as saying.The next morning on Fox News Channel, which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp, Mr. Ramaswamy told the anchor Maria Bartiromo that the report was erroneous.“Maria, that was misquoted and purposeful opposition research with the headline,” he said. “You know how this game is played.”The Post did not respond to a request for comment.In an interview with The Times, Mr. Ramaswamy described the headline as “manufactured” and said it was part of “the ridiculous farce of this gotcha game.”Aid to IsraelMr. Ramaswamy clashed with Fox News host Sean Hannity Monday night when confronted with comments he has made about aid to Israel. Mr. Ramaswamy accused Mr. Hannity of misrepresenting his views.“You said aid to Israel, our No. 1 ally, only democracy in the region, should end in 2028,” Mr. Hannity said in the interview. “And that they should be integrated with their neighbors.”“That’s false,” Mr. Ramaswamy responded.“I have an exact quote, do you want me to read it?” Mr. Hannity asked.Mr. Ramaswamy’s rhetoric about support for Israel has shifted.During a campaign event in New Hampshire earlier this month, Mr. Ramaswamy called the deal to provide Israel with $38 billion over 10 years “sacrosanct.” But a few weeks later in an interview with The Free Beacon, a conservative website, he said that he hoped that Israel would “not require and be dependent on that same level of historical aid or commitment from the U.S.” by 2028, when the deal expires.Wearing masksIn the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, the Masks for All Act, a bill proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that aimed to provide every person in the United States with three free N95 masks, appeared to receive an unlikely endorsement on Twitter — from Mr. Ramaswamy.“My policy views don’t often align with Bernie, but this strikes me as a sensible idea,” he wrote in July 2020. “The cost is a tiny fraction of other less compelling federal expenditures on COVID-19.”Mr. Ramaswamy was responding to an opinion column written for CNN by Mr. Sanders, who is a democratic socialist, and Andy Slavitt, who was later a top pandemic adviser to Mr. Biden. He said they should have picked someone from the political right as a co-author to show that there was a consensus on masks.But when he was pressed this summer by Josie Glabach of the Red Headed Libertarian podcast about whether he had ever supported Mr. Sanders’s mask measure, he answered no.When asked by The Times for further clarification, Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged that he was an early supporter of wearing masks, but said that he no longer believed that they prevented the spread of the virus. He accused his political opponents of conflating his initial stance with support for mask mandates, which he said he had consistently opposed.An analogy to Rosa Parks?Mr. Ramaswamy appeared to compare Edward J. Snowden to Rosa Parks before immediately distancing himself from the comment.Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesWhen he was asked by the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt on his show in June whether he would pardon the former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden for leaking documents about the United States government’s surveillance programs, Mr. Ramaswamy said yes and invoked an unexpected name: the civil rights icon Rosa Parks.He said that Mr. Snowden, a fugitive, had demonstrated heroism to hold the government accountable.“Part of what makes that risk admirable — Rosa Parks long ago — is the willingness to bear punishment he already has,” he said. “That’s also why I would ensure that he was a free man.”To Mr. Hewitt, the analogy was jarring.“Wait, wait, wait, did you just compare Rosa Parks to Edward Snowden?” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy immediately distanced himself from such a comparison, while then reinforcing it, suggesting that they had both effectuated progress of a different kind.“No, I did not,” he said. “But I did compare the aspect of their willingness to take a risk in order for at the time breaking a rule that at the time was punishable.” More

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      DeSantis, in Rare CNN Interview, Defends His Struggling Campaign

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      Despite rising scrutiny, the Florida governor stuck to the same strategy — including by defending his top rival, Donald Trump, in the face of new legal troubles.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, with his poll numbers sagging and his opponents circling, defended his struggling campaign on Tuesday, saying on CNN that he had been “taking fire nonstop” but was putting together the political operation he needed to win the early nominating states next year and vault to the presidency.His afternoon appearance in a rare interview in the mainstream news media seemed intended to reset his White House campaign after weeks of second-guessing from critics who have failed to see much progress in catching his main rival, Donald J. Trump. But a major shift in tone or strategy from Mr. DeSantis, either toward the former president or in the issues he focuses on, did not appear in the offing.He remained deferential to Mr. Trump even after the front-runner signaled on Tuesday morning that he could soon be indicted for a third time, in this instance on federal charges stemming from his efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. Speaking with the CNN host Jake Tapper in an interview recorded earlier in the day, Mr. DeSantis dodged questions on his support for a national abortion ban, whether he would commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan and how to end the war in Ukraine.But he expressed confidence that he was laying the groundwork for victory in the Iowa caucuses in January, and that he, as the only military veteran in the race, would win South Carolina, a military-heavy state that comes third in the primary process.“I’ll be the first president elected since 1988 that served in a war,” Mr. DeSantis, who served in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Iraq, said outside South Carolina’s capital building in Columbia. Simply appearing on CNN appeared to be an acknowledgment that Mr. DeSantis needs to change his approach after confining his interviews to conservative news outlets and relying on allies to take on the former president. Mr. Trump has comfortably led polls nationally and in the Palmetto State for months.And Mr. DeSantis’s newly released fund-raising figures, although strong overall at $20 million, showed that his campaign has been spending hand over fist and is dangerously dependent on large donors, who could be looking elsewhere for a Trump alternative. His campaign has also begun cutting its staff, in another worrying sign.Still, mindful of alienating core Republican voters who are sympathetic to Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis pulled his punches on Tuesday. After news broke that Mr. Trump had received a “target letter” from the special counsel, Jack Smith, the Florida governor said Mr. Trump “should have come out more forcefully” on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the rioting at the Capitol.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has mostly held interviews with friendly conservative news outlets, not mainstream organizations.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressBut Mr. DeSantis added that criminal charges would fit a pattern of weaponization of political institutions against conservatives.“I think what we’ve seen in this country is an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences,” he said during a campaign event in West Columbia, S.C.Mr. DeSantis’s social media team, in fact, pushed back on the suggestion that the governor was insufficiently supportive of the former president.How such deference might undermine Mr. Trump’s lead was unclear. Two Republican candidates from South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott and former Gov. Nikki Haley, are also hoping to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s legal peril and Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles and present themselves as the new alternative to the former president.For Mr. DeSantis, a drastic reboot of his campaign is not obvious.On Monday night in Tega Cay, S.C., on the North Carolina border, he stuck to his well-worn talking points: the supposed “indoctrination” of children by “leftist” educators; mobilizing the military to the southern border to stop “our country being invaded”; and his disappointment in Mr. Trump for failing to fire Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who helped lead the Covid-19 response.On Tuesday morning, Mr. DeSantis discussed military policy in an airplane hangar outside Columbia. He filed the paperwork formally declaring his candidacy in the state that morning.His remarks were heavy on themes he has hit since he joined the race: railing against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and what he called “woke operating policies” like drag shows, which the Defense Department ended last month. He also proposed to reinstate the Trump administration’s ban on transgender sailors, soldiers and marines, and promised to end funding for transition care for active-duty service members.Pressed by Mr. Tapper on how the roughly one million transgender adults in the United States would live under a DeSantis administration, the governor said military readiness took precedence over what he characterized as individual life choices.Beyond the military, he said, “I would respect everybody, but what I wouldn’t do is turn society upside down” to accommodate “a very, very small percentage of the population.”Mr. DeSantis also said he would reinstate service members who had been relieved of duty for declining to take the Covid-19 vaccine, a move that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III instituted a year ago.Although the Trump administration broadly moved against transgender rights throughout the federal government, the DeSantis campaign has framed Mr. Trump as weak on his opposition to rolling back L.G.B.T.Q. rights. It may be having an impact.Elizabeth James, 69, a retiree and self-proclaimed “grandmama for DeSantis” who lives in the Columbia area, said she supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 but soured on him after he “waffled” on transgender issues. She applauded Mr. DeSantis’s plans to end military funding for service members’ transition surgeries and said she believed that too few Republican voters knew enough about Mr. Trump’s record on L.G.B.T.Q. issues.“They’re just holding over from him in 2020 without re-examining where he is now,” she said of the former president. “I think he shifted a lot from where he was.”By holding the CNN interview, the governor had most likely hoped to quiet detractors who say he cannot handle the heat of a critical press.Mr. Tapper pressed Mr. DeSantis on whether he would sign a national ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, mirroring the ban he signed in Florida. He said he saw no evidence Congress could pass a national abortion ban.On committing to send U.S. troops to beat back a theoretical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, again, he dodged: “We’re going to deter that from happening.”And on the hot-button Republican issue of continued U.S. military support for Ukraine, he was even more vague.“The goal should be a sustainable, enduring peace in Europe, but one that does not reward aggression,” he said.The DeSantis political operation may be strengthening its jabs against Mr. Trump. The DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down confirmed on Tuesday that a new advertisement from the group had used artificial intelligence to mimic the voice of Mr. Trump as if it were attacking Iowa’s popular conservative governor, Kim Reynolds. Politico reported on the ad on Monday evening.Mr. Trump’s feud with Ms. Reynolds over her refusal to endorse him is real, and began with an attack on his social network, Truth Social. And it could hurt the former president’s chances in Iowa.But the ad falsely purports to catch Mr. Trump on tape. The super PAC said, “Our team utilized technology to give voice to Donald Trump’s words and Truth Social post attacking Gov. Reynolds.”The Trump campaign evinced no fear.“The DeSantis campaign doesn’t know how to turn things around with their current candidate,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, said in a statement. More

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      Christie Attacks Trump in CNN Town Hall, Calling Conduct Detailed in Indictment ‘Awful’

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      A former federal prosecutor, Chris Christie said he expected the government had much more evidence in its case against the former president.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey laced into Donald J. Trump on prime-time television on Monday night, casting the former president as an “angry” and “vengeful” man who bears responsibility for thrusting the nation into another extraordinarily divisive moment, after Mr. Trump became the first former president in American history to face federal charges.During a roughly 90-minute CNN town hall in New York, a high-energy and often-polished Mr. Christie leaned on his background as a former federal prosecutor, saying he believed the indictment was “a very tight, very detailed, evidence-laden indictment, and the conduct in there is awful.” Mr. Christie, who is running for president against Mr. Trump in a Republican primary field the former president dominates, said he believed prosecutors had more evidence than had been put forward so far.Mr. Trump faces 37 criminal counts related to issues including withholding national defense information and concealing possession of classified documents.“This is vanity run amok,” Mr. Christie told the moderator, Anderson Cooper. “He is now going to put this country through this, when we didn’t have to go through it.”“He’s saying, ‘I’m more important than the country,’” Mr. Christie said at another point, as he questioned why Mr. Trump had, according to prosecutors, refused to turn over critical government documents. He suggested the former president missed the “trappings of the presidency.”“We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming D.O.J.,” he said, referring to the Justice Department. “How about, blame him? He did it. He kept — he took documents he wasn’t supposed to take.”When he was not tearing into the current Republican front-runner, Mr. Christie could sound like a pre-Trump-era politician. He emphasized the importance of finding common ground and played up his credentials as a blue-state executive, even when some in the audience were plainly skeptical of the idea of compromise.“With all due respect to these governors from red states who have Republican legislatures — man, I’m telling you, I would have given my own right arm to have a Republican legislature for a week,” Mr. Christie said at one point, seeming to draw an implicit contrast with Gov. Ron DeSantis, the powerful and pugnacious Florida Republican and another 2024 candidate who enjoys a supportive legislature in Tallahassee. “But what I learned was that, sometimes, getting 60 percent of what you want isn’t bad.”In Washington, he continued, “you’re going to want somebody tough, who’s a fighter, but who fights to get to an end, to accomplish something for you. We can all fight to get headlines.”He also noted that even with a Republican-controlled Congress for part of his tenure, Mr. Trump failed to deliver on a central campaign promise of securing the southern border.“Not one piece of legislation to change our immigration laws,” he said, bashing Mr. Trump as a “bad executive.” “It is an abject failure, and now he blames Joe Biden for it. But what the heck did you do to make it better?”For the most part, Mr. Christie, who announced his campaign last week, has tried to reintroduce himself to the nation as the Republican candidate most willing to forcefully confront Mr. Trump.But Mr. Christie, who ran a short-lived campaign for president in 2016, has gained little traction in available polling this year and has a more unfavorable rating among Republican voters than any other candidate, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. And he occupies a relatively lonely lane. Most of the other 2024 hopefuls have shied away from much direct criticism of Mr. Trump.“It was like he was Voldemort from ‘Harry Potter’ — nobody wanted to mention his name,” he said of a recent Republican campaign event, adopting a mocking voice. “Like, say his name, man, say his name.”Mr. Christie was once a key adviser to Mr. Trump, and was a relatively early endorser of his 2016 campaign after his own bid collapsed. But he has since condemned Mr. Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.In the town hall, Mr. Christie compared Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen election to how a child might try to explain away a bad grade, by offering a litany of dubious or false excuses.“It’s a child’s reaction. And I just — I beg you to think about this,” he told the Republican-leaning audience. “Don’t allow the showmanship to obscure the facts. The facts are, he lost to Joe Biden. And he lost to Joe Biden, in my opinion, because he lost independent voters.”Mr. Trump lashed out last week in response to Mr. Christie’s earlier criticism, mocking Mr. Christie’s weight and writing on his Truth Social platform, “Hard to watch, boring, but that’s what you get from a failed Governor (New Jersey) who left office with a 7% approval rating and then got run out of New Hampshire.”Mr. Christie made few waves when questioned on issues unrelated to Mr. Trump, but offered a striking admission when a man whose son was killed in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre asked how he would reduce the enormous number of mass shootings in the United States.His response was effectively: I don’t know.“I’m mad because I don’t have a great answer,” he said, after saying that law enforcement needed to be more attentive to warning signs from potential attackers, but that he did not believe restrictions on guns would make a difference — in part because Americans already own hundreds of millions of them. He also said that reducing gun violence was in “tension” with the Second Amendment.When reminded that early in his political career he supported an assault weapons ban, he called that “naïveté” and said he no longer believed it was appropriate.On abortion rights, Mr. Christie declined to take a firm position on gestational limits — or whether he would sign a national ban, should he become president and one were to reach his desk — arguing that the matter was better left up to the states for now.And on Social Security, he reiterated his support for means-testing the program, as he proposed during his 2016 campaign.Time and again, Mr. Christie reinforced a central argument of his campaign: that he would be more responsible than Mr. Trump, but also more productive.“Look, I think the single biggest thing I can contribute to unifying this country is to get rid of Joe Biden and get rid of Donald Trump,” he said. “They are past their sell-by dates, OK? It’s done. It’s time.” More

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      Where Presidential Hopes Go to Die

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      Gail Collins: Bret, before we get to Donald Trump’s big mess — how many times have I said that? Well, before we get to you-know-who, one minute on the smoke that filled the city last week. Were you in town?Bret Stephens: I was. For a few hours there, the Manhattan sky looked like something out of “Apocalypse Now” or “Blade Runner.”Gail: When I was outdoors, with a mask on, I was tempted to stop some of the young people walking past and apologize for having screwed up their future with global warming. Joe Biden’s trying hard to deal with this, but his plans aren’t nearly enough given the scope of the problem.We need, among many, many things, to end tax breaks for fossil fuel production. Is it fair to complain that Republican resistance to the very idea of climate change is a huge culprit here?Bret: You’re asking whether it’s fair to complain that Republicans are causing forest fires in Canada, a country that’s been governed by Justin Trudeau and his left-of-center coalition for the past eight years?Gail: We can certainly bemoan Canada’s ineptitude in timber management, but this is hardly the only place where we’ve seen a mess of forest fires in the last few years.Admit it. Climate change is a stupendous global crisis and everybody has to join together to fight it.Bret: I was being just a tad flip, Gail: You know I had a Damascene — or Greenlandic — conversion last year.That said, we can’t wait for China and India to wean themselves off coal to find an effective solution to the remediable problem of forest fires. The answer is good forest management, particularly by doing more to remove dead trees and use controlled burns — something, as The Times reported last week, Canada doesn’t do nearly enough of. This is why Western states run by Democrats are now looking at states like Florida, Georgia and other areas in the Southeast for tips on how to avoid giant fires.But speaking of forest fires, shall we get to that latest Trump indictment?Gail: We’re obviously in history-making territory — first former president indicted in a criminal case brought by the federal government. And this one, which involves trying to stash away official papers he’d been told were government property, is certainly a classic Trump combination of shocking and stupid.Bret: Or sinister and self-serving. I’m still not sure.Gail: Wow, the pictures of those boxes of classified documents piled up around the toilet …Bret: Really puts a new spin on the term “anal retentive.”Gail: I did sorta hope we’d start the cosmic Trump prosecutions with one of the other big charges — trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election by pressing the Georgia secretary of state to “find” more votes and encouraging the Jan. 6 insurrection do seem more … important.You?Bret: Three thoughts, Gail. The first is that Jack Smith, the special counsel, has produced irrefutable proof that Trump knew that he possessed, as the former president himself put it, “secret information” that he could have declassified when he was in office but didn’t. That may be about as close to a slam dunk, legally speaking, as we’re ever going to get in a case like this.Gail: True, but I want shockingly terrible besides terribly illegal. Go on.Bret: The second thought is that a special counsel appointed by President Biden’s attorney general is bringing a criminal case against the president’s presumptive opponent in next year’s election. To many Republicans, this will smack of a bald attempt to politicize justice and criminalize politics — the very thing Trump was accused of doing in his first impeachment. Trump will surely use this to his political advantage and, as the writer Damon Linker noted in a perceptive guest essay last week, will probably see his primary poll numbers jump yet again.Gail: Yeah, at least temporarily.Bret: The third thought comes from a tweet by the conservative writer Erick Erickson: “Take the crime out of it — do you really want to put a man back in the White House who shows off highly classified military documents to randos?”Gail: Reasonable conclusion. Yet most of Trump’s would-be Republican opponents are dodging this whole, deeply startling, issue. Or pretending it’s a Democratic plot.Bret: Pathetic. As usual.Gail: Your fave Nikki Haley attacked the Justice Department for “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.” And no candidate apart from Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, was willing to really say gee, this is the kind of thing we want to avoid in our nominee.Explain, please …Bret: You get the sense that most of these Republican Lilliputians are running to be Trump’s veep pick or his pet rock. Or they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with Trump’s base and to present themselves as a slightly more responsible version of the 45th president, which is like trying to sell a fentanyl addict on the merits of pot gummies.The only Republicans in the race who seem to have gotten it right are Christie and Hutchinson. They understand that the way to beat Trump is to go after him hammer-and-tongs.Gail: Where does that leave you? Holding out hope for Chris Christie? I must confess it’s hard to imagine Hutchinson as any kind of contender.Bret: I respect his willingness to stand up clearly and strongly against Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election.Gail: Sounds good — and the last time I looked, Hutchinson was doing at least as well as, um, Ted Cruz.Does the need for big money worry you? It’s impressive to be a super-successful business person, but I’m not sure it’s as important as, say, running a state the way so many of the Republican candidates have.Bret: I was extremely enthusiastic about the prospect of a Mike Bloomberg presidency. Generally speaking, I prefer politicians who make their money before going into politics, the way Bloomberg did, as opposed to politicians who trade on their celebrity to make money after being in politics, the way the Clintons did.But back to Christie: Don’t be surprised if his campaign catches fire. People will be more than willing to forgive Bridgegate or his lackluster second term as governor if he can make things interesting in the G.O.P. contest. Which, merely by opening his mouth, he definitely can.Gail: Bret, I have to admit I will be surprised. But I would love, love to see Christie qualify for the Republican debate in August. Think there’s a chance?Bret: All Christie needs is 1 percent support in three polls, 40,000 campaign contributors and a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee, along with some other stipulations. I think he’ll manage that. The bigger question is whether Trump will agree to the final requirement — something he refused to do in 2016.Gail: You know, I was wondering that about Christie too, since he’s said he wouldn’t support Trump as the nominee. My cynical view is that anybody will get into the debate who wants to, which means that Christie — if he can meet the other requirements — will be there even if he has to fudge a bit. And that Trump will dodge the whole event no matter what the rules are.Bret: To do another town hall on the Collapsing News Network?Gail: Which would leave me with the hope of spending the dog days of summer watching Christie take on Ron DeSantis ….Bret: Something tells me he’ll be more circumspect about going hard against the Florida governor, just in case DeSantis becomes president and he wants the job of attorney general.Gail: Eww.Bret: Can we get back to CNN for a moment? Big news last week with the departure of its ill-starred president, Chris Licht. Any advice for whoever succeeds him?Gail: Well, there’s the rule that you shouldn’t go into a big interview with the assumption that you’re so charming that any writer who’s hanging out with you will just want to be pals.Bret: Much less give that reporter a sense of your workout routine. Gives a whole new meaning to the truism, “Never let them see you sweat.”Gail: But on a more cosmic level, Bret, I worry and wonder all the time about the future of the media in a wireless world. Very hard to make money doing critical chores like covering state and local government. Or even just pursuing hard news.Crossing fingers that the next CNN head will find a way to attract a big audience in search of serious reporting.You?Bret: I’m rooting for the network to return to its hard-news roots. Licht had the right idea, he just went about it badly. Instead of losing a lot of weight and getting rid of people, he should have taken another piece of timeless advice: “Leave the gun, take the cannolis” — as in, eat more, fire less.Gail: Wow, think that’ll work for the presidential candidates wandering around Iowa summer fairs?Bret: Everyone in Iowa ought to know “The Godfather” by heart. It’s the state where most presidential hopes go to die.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Why ‘Succession’ Is a Work of Fantasy

      by

      It was interesting, after writing last week’s newsletter on the problems of conservative media, to watch Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Succession,” in which the show’s lightly fictionalized version of Fox News, run by its somewhat more meaningfully fictionalized version of the Fox-owning Murdoch family, takes center stage for an imagined election night. (There will be some spoilers below, fair warning.) Between the Dominion Voting Systems settlement and the Tucker Carlson firing, we’ve had a lot of real-world Fox drama lately, and the contrast between reality and fiction tells us something interesting about how art depicts our politics — and how the nature of democratic politics can resist successful dramatization.In the real world, the last presidential election night saw Fox News call Arizona early (calling it correctly, though probably earlier than was justified by the extremely narrow margin), yielding fury from Donald Trump’s campaign and backlash from the Fox audience, whose drift toward other outlets helps explain why Fox allowed election conspiracy theories to run wild on some of its shows. It was a case study in the problem I described last week, where conservative media has ended up captive to the particular expectations of a large television audience — a demand for infotainment, reality-TV drama, good guys and bad guys, nothing that doesn’t make sense within the expected nightly narrative.In the world of “Succession,” the key election-night dilemma is somewhat similar — when to call a crucial state — but the dynamics are quite different. The show’s presidential election is disrupted by a fire (arson?) at a Milwaukee precinct that destroys thousands of ballots, leaving the right-wing candidate ahead pending litigation, and his campaign wants ATN (the show’s Fox News) to call Wisconsin for him immediately. The decision gets punted up to the Roy siblings, the would-be heirs to their recently deceased father’s corporate empire, and though there are references to what the ATN audience wants, the Roys end up making a very bad, republic-undermining decision for reasons internal to their family dynamics. The brothers, Kendall and Roman, want to keep the company rather than go through with a planned sale to a Scandinavian tech billionaire, the right-wing candidate has promised to block the deal for them if he’s elected, and their sister, Shiv, the liberal of the group, is playing her own double game that blows up in her face.A key question throughout the show’s seasons has been whether “Succession” is ultimately the drama of, well, succession promised by the title — a story in the style of “The Godfather,” where one of the main characters emerges as the (corrupted) heir to the father’s empire — or whether it’s headed for a version of the “Hamlet” ending, where everybody stabs or poisons everybody else and some outsider shows up to claim the throne. With two episodes left, the dice seem loaded for the second outcome: Failsons and a faildaughter lose their company and, oops, bring down the American republic along the way.But as a political drama, which “Succession” is at least secondarily, both of these narratives are essentially elite-driven and family-driven, suggesting a world where to understand what happens in American politics, you mostly need to understand the pressures and pathologies afflicting a narrow group of power brokers.Which is, certainly, part of the truth. I write a lot about elites, everybody writes a lot about elites, because as the word suggests they’re pretty important to figuring out what’s going on in society — and also because when you write about politics for a living, you’re often writing for an audience that thinks of itself as at least elite-adjacent, part of the professional class, the overclass, the meritocracy.Thus a lot of arguments about the Republican Party in the age of Trump necessarily revolve around what some segment of this overclass is getting wrong. Is it liberal elites whose failures and ideological fixations keep giving oxygen to populism? Or media elites who keep covering Trump the wrong way (with vast disagreements about what the right way would be)? Or conservative elites who just need to summon moral courage and stand up against demagogy? Or the entire elite that needs replacement by a better one, ideally forged by classically minded finishing schools and papal encyclicals? The answer varies but the narrative endures because “affecting some change in elite behavior” is the biggest lever that seems within a pundit’s reach.When I watch “Succession” with this mind-set, my main complaint about the show’s political vision is that it mostly leaves out a kind of Republican elite who would be connected to any Fox News-like enterprise. The show obviously has no trouble scripting the amoral cynics getting rich off a conservative base they secretly despise, and it does a decent job channeling the voice of the very-online right (the far-right presidential candidate has a weird patois that sounds like Robert Nisbet crossed with a Nietzschean edgelord). But it doesn’t have much representation for the more normal Republicans who definitely exist inside Fox World, the kind of people who believe in conventional conservative principles and end up compromising with populists they dislike because of liberals they fear more. The show can only imagine weird fanatics on the one hand, and on the other hand pure cynics who secretly know the liberals are right and they themselves are bad guys.But what’s really missing from the political drama on “Succession” isn’t just sincere, non-edgelord Republicans. It’s the crucial role of non-elites — mass opinion, “the people,” anything from a national majority to a primary-season electorate or just a particularly large television audience — as a force unto themselves, a gravity well that every elite stratagem has to work with or around.Sure, the people don’t rule in some naïve or simplistic sense; some kind of elite power is always fundamental. But from a dramatic point of view, the mass American public is as important a “character” in the story of right-wing populism as Rupert Murdoch or for that matter Trump himself. The people, in the form of the mass Fox News audience, drove what happened around and after the 2020 election more than any sibling rivalry inside the House of Murdoch. They’re why the alleged election fraud fiasco went down the way it went down. They’re why Carlson became a cable news ratings king. They’re why, since his firing, a lot fewer people have been watching Fox and Newsmax has been pulling in about as many viewers in its 8 p.m. time slot as CNN.The same point applies to democratic politics writ large. People in rooms talking drive a lot of political action, but if they drove all of it, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have been the Republican nominee in 2016 (when Murdoch’s network was surprised and overwhelmed by Trumpism), Elizabeth Warren probably would have been the Democratic nominee in 2020 and Trump definitely wouldn’t be a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024. Our elites can work to tame mass opinion, to master it or redirect it or find some means of resistance — but it’s always there, always doing something in the story.And if that’s a somewhat difficult thing for punditry to reckon with, at least we can write and talk about it in terms of opinion polling and television ratings and the like. Dramatizing the force of mass opinion artistically is much harder. It’s a big part of why there aren’t that many great novels or great movies about the workings of American democracy, relative to the monarchical systems of the past; one of the democratic age’s central characters, the mass public, is just really hard to realize on the page or on the screen.Likewise, a significant part of the contemporary appeal of both historical fiction and my own favored genre of fantasy is that they return politics to a period where the personal encompasses more of the political — where family rivalries and court intrigues loom larger, and mass politics means the occasional mob or the rampaging army but not the daily poll or the nightly ratings, the force of public opinion that lacks embodiment but constantly drives political action nonetheless.The elite world of “Succession,” where the patriarch Logan Roy was both a corporate king and a political kingmaker, is thus ultimately a kind of fantasy fiction, a George R.R. Martin-ish gloss on contemporary American politics: entertaining and smart and on point in some ways, hopefully headed for a more successful wrap than “Game of Thrones,” but finally inadequate to actual political reality, because it always leaves a protagonist offstage.Programming NotesFirst, a reminder that I’m part of a new Times podcast, “Matter of Opinion,” that comes out every Thursday; find the latest episodes here.Second, The Times has just introduced a new iOS app for audio journalism called New York Times Audio, featuring all our podcasts as well as narrated articles from across all our sections, from Opinion and Politics to Food and Sports. It includes the archive of “This American Life” and read-aloud stories from a range of national magazines. It’s available to Times news subscribers, and you can download it here.BreviaryNathan Pinkoski on the evolution of Francis Fukuyama.Scott Alexander compares Francis Galton and Paul Ehrlich.Alex de Waal on the war for Khartoum.Richard Rushfield and Matt Stoller on the Hollywood writers’ strike.Damon Linker tries to stabilize social liberalism. More